A website dedicated to the man so uniquely unqualified to be President. This blog by by radio talk host Todd Feinburg has been replaced by RealClearThinker.com.
For all the fury over Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion emergency economic relief fund, it seems downright puny when compared to the running total of the government's response to the credit crisis.
Has his remarkable good luck run out, or is this just the opportunity he wants.
According to CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, the U.S. government has put itself on the hook for some $5 trillion, so far, in an attempt to arrest a collapse of the financial system.
You can't be a great president without bad times, and I think Barack's pretty eager to join the folks on Mount Rushmore.
The estimate includes many of the various solutions cooked up by Paulson and his counterparts Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Sheila Bair at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as the credit crisis continues to plague banks and the broader markets.
If Barack can lead America through this crisis, and get himself re-elected, he'll be viewed as one of the greats.
The Fed has taken on much of that total, including lending a cumulative $1 trillion in overnight or short-term loans since March to primary dealers through its emergency discount window and making a cumulative $1.8 trillion available through its term auction facility, a series of short-term transactions it began making available twice a month in January. It should be noted that a portion of the funds lent in these programs has been repaid and that the totals represent what has been made available.
Barack's good luck streak will be severely tested.
'THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."
Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe's conservative columnist, picks apart Frank's position.
That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "
In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.
Did the mortgage industry get the idea all by itself to loan money to people who were bad credit risks?
...Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
It sounds like another case of Killer Compassion.
All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.
As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"
Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.
It's news that should make everyone look at Barney Frank, and the Democrats in Congress, a bit differently.
Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he'll find one suspect in the nearest mirror.
Ready to go into a 4pm White House meeting, it's unclear whether congress has hammered out acceptable terms for an agreement.
Key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement Thursday on an outline for a historic $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, but there was still resistance from rank-and-file House Republicans despite warnings of an impending panic.
"I now expect we will, indeed, have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate, be signed by the president and bring a sense of certainty to this crisis that is sill roiling in the market," Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said as members of both parties emerged from a two-hour negotiating session.
"We're very confident that we can act expeditiously," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman.
Some are being much more reserved in their analysis. Are they delaying the celebration on behalf of John McCain? No reason to think that Republicans won't be as willing to politicize this as Democrats have been.
Not everyone in the closed-door talks was as optimistic. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the only House Republican in the bargaining meeting, stopped short of saying he agreed with the other lawmakers on an imminent deal.
"There was progress today," said Bachus, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services panel.
Later, he issued a statement saying he was not empowered to strike any deals and there was "no agreement other than to continue discussions."
Both houses' Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, also issued statements saying there was no agreement.
Good old Bill Clinton comes through again, reminding people that Democrats share some of the blame for the current situation.
It's good of Bill to choose now to be above the fray.
Appearing on Good Morning America Thursday, Clinton told ABC News' Chris Cuomo that McCain's push to postpone the debate would only be a good political move if both candidates agreed. McCain announced on Wednesday that he would "suspend" his presidential campaign to come to Washington to help negotiate a financial bailout bill
"We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.
"You can put it off a few days the problem is it's hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."
If the debate moves forward as planned for Friday night, Clinton says "they should be able to talk about this some of the debate because it is a security issue."
And, by the way, you don't have to tell Bill why voters have gone crazy for Palin!
Bill Clinton praised Sarah Palin Wednesday, saying he found the Alaska governor an “appealing person” and her and her family “gutsy, spirited and real.”
“I think that she and her husband and their kids come across gutsy, spirited and real,” he said in an interview to be broadcast Wednesday night. “I have significant disagreements with her about any number of social and economic issues but I find her an appealing person and I think that it’s best to say that Senator McCain looks like he knew what he was doing. He picked somebody who gave him a lot of energy, a lot of support.”
So here's the deal. This afternoon, shortly before 3pm et, McCain announces that he's suspending his campaign to return to Washington and attend to the bailout measure, which is being revised after polls indicate Americans aren't much interested in saving the tycoons on Wall Street.
Like crazed kids with credit cards, the Stock Monsters went on a spending spree, sure that no matter what happened, mom and dad would always be there to bail them out. "We're not going to pay," say the parents.
In mortal fear of an electorate that notices and cares about anything going on in Washington, Senators from both parties are slobering over themselves in an effort to appear more eager to punish Wall Street CEO's and pretend to want to give money to individuals in pain rather than to save the system.
The Democrats tried to make finding a resolution McCain's problem, with Majority Leader Harry Reid taunting McCain last night saying we need to know where the senator stands.
Meanwhile, Barack says he gets a phone call from Senator Tom Coburn of Kentucky, an arch conservative Republican who Barack has portrayed as one of his senate friends despite Coburn's alleged neanderthal politics. They've cosponsored legislation. Barack says Coburn suggested that Obama and McCain make a joint statement on the bailout plan.
McCain gets a call and Barack makes the suggestion. While mulling the idea over, McCain decides he should go much further, and suspend his campaign and go to Washington to be part of the process. He calls Barack back, and according to Barack, tells him this is what he thinks they should do.
Barack indicates that he thinks he has time to consider the idea, but the next thing he knows, McCain is on TV announcing his plans.
Meanwhile, Barack holds a press conference to respond to McCain, and says he's not going to accept McCain's suggestion that he also suspend campaigning and postpone the debate. He says we need the debate now more than ever, so the American people get to hear what the two major party nominees have to say about the crisis.
Harry Reid issues a statement - we don't need presidential politics injected into Washington - and the battle lines are drawn. McCain portrays himself as bold in the face of crisis, Barack portrays himself as getting backhanded by McCain, but poised and confident under stress.
Even with the financial world melting down, the boys play their games.
